face to face in public places.’
‘But he’s under surveillance, right?’
‘Most of the time, yes. But ninety-nine per cent of the time he does nothing. He sleeps, he goes to the mosque, he eats, he socialises. We’ve no idea what he says to the people he meets, which is why Chaudhry and Malik are so valuable. They’re the only assets we have in his circle.’
‘But yesterday he lost his watchers?’
‘It happens now and again. He goes into anti-surveillance mode and he’s clearly been trained by experts. We could have a dozen men on him and he’d still lose them all.’
‘So he knows that he’s being followed?’
‘Our guys are experts too, Spider. I doubt that he knows that he’s being followed; it’s just that every time he goes active he employs all the anti-surveillance techniques at his disposal. Like I said, he’s hardcore. I wish we knew what he was planning. We could be looking at anything, couldn’t we? Guns. Bombs. Chemicals. We just don’t know.’
‘There’s nothing to suggest that it’s a suicide attack,’ said Shepherd. ‘So I don’t think it’ll be bombs.’
‘They could be lying to Chaudhry and Malik,’ said Button. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time.’
‘What do you need me to do?’ asked Shepherd.
‘Where are you?’
‘Hampstead. Just dropping some stuff off.’
‘Soon as you’ve done that, come to Thames House,’ she said. ‘I’ll get an operation room set up.’
‘I’d rather be closer to them.’
‘No can do,’ said Button. ‘You’re not a professional follower. The last thing we need is you showing out. Soon as you can, okay?’
‘I’m on my way,’ said Shepherd.
Chaudhry unlocked the door to his flat and wheeled in his bike. Malik was sprawled on the sofa eating his way through a bag of crisps and watching a quiz show on television. Chaudhry glared at him. ‘Why the hell is your phone off?’ he said.
‘Battery died,’ said Malik. ‘It’s charging.’
Chaudhry kicked the door shut and leaned his bike against the back of the sofa. ‘Khalid called,’ he said. ‘It’s today.’
‘What?’ Malik sat up, spilling crisps over the carpet. ‘What do you mean?’
‘What do you think I mean?’ said Chaudhry, tossing his helmet on to an armchair. He folded his arms and stood glaring down at Malik.
‘Today? It’s today?’
Chaudhry nodded. ‘It’s today.’
‘What do they want us to do?’ Malik asked.
‘How am I supposed to know?’ Chaudhry said, shrugging.
Malik stood up. Stray crisps fell to the carpet. ‘He didn’t say anything?’
‘Harvey, if he’d told me one word don’t you think I’d have told you? He said be here, now. He said we’d be picked up. That’s all he said.’ Chaudhry walked into the small kitchen and opened the fridge. ‘Why is there never anything to drink?’ he said. ‘I bought three cans of Coke yesterday so where the hell are they?’
‘This is fucked up,’ said Malik, coming up behind him. ‘Why didn’t they tell us what’s going on?’
Chaudhry slammed the fridge door. ‘Because the fewer people who know what we’re doing, the less chance it gets out. Need to know.’
‘It’s treating us like we don’t matter, that’s what’s going on here.’ Malik screwed up his face and grunted. ‘Bastards, bastards, bastards.’
‘Relax,’ said Chaudhry. He switched on the kettle. ‘What happens, happens.’
‘Have you called John?’
‘First thing I did.’
‘What if they. .’ Malik left the sentence unfinished.
‘What?’ said Chaudhry.
‘What if they want us to. . you know. . shahid.’
Chaudhry’s mouth fell open. ‘Are you crazy? Where’s that come from?’
‘This doesn’t feel right. This isn’t what they said would happen. Maybe they’ve changed their minds. Maybe they want us to be martyrs.’
‘We talked about this. After all the training they’ve put us through they wouldn’t throw us away like that. And remember what The Sheik said. They want us to be warriors, not shahid. Now stop talking nonsense.’ He reached for a jar of Nescafe. ‘Do you want a coffee?’
‘Do I want a coffee? We might be dead in a few hours and you’re worrying about coffee?’
Chaudhry pointed a finger at Malik’s face. ‘I told you, stop talking crap. Now do you want coffee or not?’
Malik nodded. ‘Okay, thanks,’ he whispered.
‘It’s going to be okay, Harvey. We always knew we’d get the call at some point.’ He spooned coffee granules into two mugs.
‘I just worry that they might not be straight with us,’ said Malik. ‘We don’t know what they’re capable of, not really.’
Chaudhry leaned against the fridge and folded his arms. ‘Khalid wants us in Church Street at five. We’ll be collected and taken to wherever it is he wants us. What do you want to do? Call him and tell him we’ve had a change of heart?’
‘We could do that,’ said Malik. ‘We absolutely could. We could just call it a day.’
‘We can’t,’ said Chaudhry, shaking his head.
‘We can. We’ve done enough. We just tell John that we want out. MI5 can’t force us to go on like this. We gave them The Sheik. We showed them who’s bad in the mosque. We can walk away with our heads held high.’ He gripped Chaudhry’s shoulder so hard that Chaudhry winced. ‘Let’s go, brother. Let’s go before we’re in any deeper.’
‘We can’t do that,’ said Chaudhry. ‘We can’t let John down. And what would Khalid do if we left now?’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Malik, letting go of his flatmate’s shoulder.
‘With everything we know about him and the organisation, how could he let us live?’
‘We could run. Disappear.’
‘Harvey, how could we do that? To disappear we’d need money, we’d need documents, passports. The only people who could arrange that for us would be MI5. And if we run they’re not going to help us, are they?’
‘We’ve helped them already, haven’t we? We gave them The Sheik. They owe us for that. In fact screw them. We can go to the Americans. They’d put us in their witness protection scheme. We’d have a whole new life in the States.’
‘Yeah, and who do we talk to? You want to phone the White House and talk to the President?’ Chaudhry laughed harshly. ‘Sure, that’d work,’ he said sarcastically. ‘We don’t even know for certain that they told the Americans about us.’
‘So we’re trapped,’ said Malik.
‘It’s not a trap, it’s an opportunity,’ said Chaudhry. The kettle finished boiling and he poured water into the mugs and stirred. ‘When we first went to MI5 we went because we knew that people would die if we didn’t. We knew what Khalid and his people were planning to do, right?’
Malik nodded. Chaudhry splashed milk into both mugs and handed one to his friend.
‘I’ve already spoken to John. He’ll be watching us. They’ll move in before anything happens and we’ll be heroes.’ He raised his mug. ‘Trust me, Harvey. We’ll be heroes, this will be over and we can get on with our lives.’ He clinked his mug against Malik’s.
‘I hope you’re right,’ said Malik.
‘We’ve got a live video feed from a van across the road,’ said Luke Lesporis, MI5’s head of London surveillance. Lesporis had cut his surveillance teeth following drug dealers in south London, more often than not with dreadlocks and a Bob Marley T-shirt. But his streetwalking days were almost a decade behind him. MI5 had hired him to head up their London surveillance team and he now had close-cropped hair and spent most of his time behind a desk in a Hugo Boss suit. He looked over at Charlotte Button and pushed his wire-framed designer
